


I've Loved You Longer

by BerityBaker



Series: Eddie Kaspbrak is Alive, Motherfuckers [2]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Character Death Fix, Eddie Kaspbrak Lives, Eddie Kaspbrak Loves Richie Tozier, Fix-It, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, Richie Tozier Loves Eddie Kaspbrak, Sharing a Bed, Tickle Fights
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-28
Updated: 2019-09-28
Packaged: 2020-10-29 15:55:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20799200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BerityBaker/pseuds/BerityBaker
Summary: The night after killing It, Richie and Eddie spend some quality time discussing their childhood.A direct sequel to Finish What You Started, but can be read as a standalone.





	I've Loved You Longer

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this shortly after Finish What You Started but I left it in a Word document until now for some reason? A thousand words of fluff and I didn't bother sharing it? I'm a monster.

After a lively game night in the sitting room of the Town House with the other Losers, Richie and Eddie slip away to Richie’s room together. If anyone notices, they don’t say anything, though Richie’s sure he spots a knowing smirk on Ben’s face when he glances back.

They’re still wiped from the fight of their lives the night before, though, so all they do is lie down in their underwear for a while, staring at each other. Richie doesn’t want to take his glasses off—he wants to be able to see Eddie fall asleep. He rests a hand on Eddie’s ribs and doesn’t flinch even a little when one of Eddie’s finds his waist.

“Haven’t seen this much skin since we were thirteen,” Richie jokes, because silence is always a vacuum he’s ready to fill. He’s surprised it’s taken him this long to say something, but he’s grateful he was able to stay quiet long enough to re-commit the sound of Eddie’s breaths to memory.

Eddie exhales sharply through his nose and grins. “You _did_ grow into your looks.”

Richie pokes him in the stomach.

Then they’re miraculously silent again, and Richie’s moved on to memorizing the pattern of the crow’s feet around Eddie’s eyes. All the while, he lightly strokes his side, always pausing at the dip of his waist and changing directions.

Eddie breaks the silence with a whisper this time. “I love you, Richie.”

Richie’s heart feels like it’s been swaddled in scarves that are just on the verge of being wrapped too tight. “I love you, too, Eds.”

“I’ve always loved you.”

“Yeah? Well I’ve loved you longer,” Richie replies, and Eddie kicks him in the shin without any real force.

“It’s not a contest, asshole.”

“You only say that ’cause you’re losing.”

“No I’m not,” Eddie protests.

“Prove it.”

“How am I supposed to prove that I’ve always loved you? And why don’t _you_ have to prove it?”

Richie waggles his eyebrows and scratches their initials against his side. “I already have.”

Eddie glares.

Richie’s hand stops just under Eddie’s armpit as he purses his lips. “Can I ask you something?”

Suddenly puzzled, he says, “I guess.”

“Are you still ticklish?”

Eddie’s eyes immediately blow up to the size of Kennedy half-dollars, but he doesn’t have time to move before Richie’s wormed his fingers under his arm, forcing peals of laughter from deep in his chest.

“Goddammit, st-stop it, Ri-hi-hichie!” he shouts through shallow breaths, but they’re not the worrisome kind.

“Look! We found Bill’s stutter,” Richie remarks, and one of Eddie’s flailing hands lands on his shoulder.

“I’m gonna legit piss in your bed if you don’t stop it right now!”

Richie stops tickling him immediately. He realizes his mistake, however, when Eddie launches himself up and over, landing with a knee on either side of Richie’s waist and his hands already digging in for revenge. Richie’s legs kick out uncontrollably, but Eddie admirably stays balanced on top of him with a devilish grin, his nose wrinkled up and his tongue poking out of his mouth in concentration.

Eventually, though, he’s had enough, and they both go limp, still giggling, Richie on his back with Eddie’s chin propped up on his chest. “I just thought of something.”

“What’s that?” Richie slurs. He really is getting sleepy now, and his eyes droop closed.

“The hammock. In the clubhouse.”

The corner of Richie’s mouth quirks up at the memory. “What about it?”

“You could have tickled me out of that thing, easy.”

He opens his eyes. “But?”

“But you didn’t want to.”

“Ladies and gentlemen!” Richie announces to an invisible crowd. “He’s _figured it out_!”

Eddie cranes his neck to kiss him quiet, then continues. “My foot was _on_ your face,” he says, and he doesn’t have to clarify, because they both know his feet are particularly sensitive. “It’s not like you couldn’t reach it.”

“And you knocked my glasses off, anyway, because no good deed goes unpunished.”

“Good deed, my ass. That was pure selfishness.”

“How do you know I wasn’t just feeling particularly nice that day?”

“Because why do you think I climbed into that hammock with you in the first place, idiot?”

The thought strikes Richie dumb for a record third time that day, because it had honestly never occurred to him that Eddie wanted to be that close to him, too.

His head bobs when Richie shrugs. “My time was up.” There’s a realization somewhere at the back of his mind that he’d been banking on it, that he’d hoped Eddie would get frustrated and take his turn by force, and he got his wish—it would just take him several years to realize it wasn’t by his own design.

“Actually, you had another two minutes. I set the timer short.”

Richie’s alarmed by the sudden tears in his eyes, so he pretends to wipe big fat ones away and quips, “You liked me. You really liked me!”

But it’s not really a joke. And by the look on his face, Eddie can tell.

“_And_ you’re a dirty, rotten scoundrel!” Richie adds, and this time he really is being funny.

“Scoundrel, sure,” Eddie allows. “Rotten? No. Dirty—?”

“Never?” Richie guesses.

Eddie narrows his eyes. “Sometimes.”

Richie squints at him. “Eddie Kaspbrak, _dirty_? I’d have to see it with my own eyes.”

Right on cue, Eddie rolls his hips, kisses him, then promptly flops over onto his side with his head still on Richie’s shoulder.

“Fuckin’ tease,” Richie whines.

“Not tonight. You’re too tired for what I want to do.”

“What…what _do_ you want to do?”

Eddie shifts to whisper in his ear, and what he says makes Richie’s jaw drop.

He turns his head, and he knows he must look pretty comical, with his glasses crooked from their tickle-fight and his brow furrowed and his mouth a small _oh_ of surprise. “Holy shit, Eds.”

Eddie kisses the corner of his mouth. “’Night, Richie.”

“Eddie, what’s gotten into you?”

“Nothin’ yet.”

Richie blinks a few times to restart his brain. “Admirable attempt, but that doesn’t fit with what you just said to me _at all_.”

Eddie shrugs and repeats, with finality, “’Night, Richie.”

“Jesus Christ,” Richie mutters, letting himself sink against the pillow and gazing at Eddie from the corner of his eye. He doesn’t take his glasses off, because he falls asleep before Eddie, who carefully takes them off once he’s snoring and places them on the bedside table, as he will almost every night for years to come.


End file.
